Power System Failures

Power systems can fail because of various reasons. Often, the effect of smaller failures is limited to the failure and repair of a single network component, as the power system is designed and operated considering \(N-1\,\) redundancy. Serious failures of the power system are therefore caused by combinations of component failures and other influencing factors. In probabilistic reliability analysis, the reliability of the power system is determined based on the reliability of individual components. This chapter discusses how failures of power system components can lead to a large blackout. Failure statistics of components are analyzed and historical blackouts are studied to obtain more insight into this matter.